‘Clayface’ Took Shape as This Weekend’s Box Office Winner

The busy movie month of October continued with four movies this weekend—and of them, Clayface came out #1. Per Variety, the DC supervillain flick earned $24 million domestic, just barely missing initial projections. Despite that, the $19 million from international territories brought it to $43 million worldwide. A solid marketing push and positive reception from critics and audiences sure helped this, ditto those curious about the character’s body horror moments glimpsed in the trailers. If nothing else, the open helps solidify Warner Bros.’ experiment of spinning Batman villains into their own projects, hence The Penguin and potentially Poison Ivy in the near future. As for the other headliners, Laika’s Wildwood opened to $11.6 million domestic and $3 million from a handful of international markets. Its North American take is above the $6-8 million projection range, so the marketing and high acclaim’s paid off. It’ll reportedly hit other territories in the next few weeks, so its numbers could go up, up, up. The same’s true of Wicker, the romcom fantasy starring Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgard which made $5.8 million in North America. It’s set to hit the UK next week on October 30, then October 5 in Australia. Finally, Klara and the Sun made $720,000 in its first weekend. As Variety notes, Sony reduced screenings after those reviews hit, which indicates it may not be long for the theaters. Should that be the case, it probably won’t be too long before it hits VOD and streaming, where maybe audiences will take to it better there after they see a clip that makes it go viral. Since Clayface is a horror movie and next week is Halloween, maybe it’ll endure the scary weekend. For November, the reason genre stuff doesn’t start til late in the month with Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (November 20) and Hexed (November 25). Want more io9 news? Check out the best movies and TV shows to stream this month and all the upcoming sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books that should be on your radar.